DR - People like me using fear and mistrust??? I'm just stating fact. Have you not noticed the ever eroding freedoms, and the ever more forceful state, and increasing police powers and more and more control by 'authorities' that have us serving them - or be fined at every turn?
That said, some of your next tempering words are refreshing, and no - in your conclusion, you are not wrong, in fact spot on.
Then suddenly I am
"some gung ho redneck telling me that we all need to be armed to the teeth & that everything is a conspiracy to get our weapons from us. I suppose this is all a plot so that the 'yellow hoard' can overthrow the country with little resistance from us........." The demons within you are active little blighters aren't they? - or just a bit too much whacky weed? I haven't once mentioned "conspiracy" nor suggesting that people be "armed to the teeth", and NO - I didn't come here to destabilise anything - to me that's like graffiti - unwanted and unnecessary.
Furthermore, I didn't mention Pt Arthur in anything I've said - you did! Perhaps it was to explain your stance. In fact I again agree with you, which of course means I agree with Derek in an earlier posting (Page 4 I think). That said, Derek speaks with forked tongue and is insulting to all gun owners - bad vibes!
Nontheless, your mental gyrations are indeed 'athletic'.
Dicko (what an unfortunate name) - Well then good sir - please enlighten people as to when is an appropriate time to enter an open discussion?
Before anybody jumps in and say I'm peddling LDP - I haven't and I'm not - but somewhere in the flurry of words it could be seen that way.
I'm a bit confused here;
a) Does believing in personal freedom of choice and of thought with appropriate responsibility and accountability, really make one left wing?
b) If so, then the quest must be 'right wing', and to unflinchingly suffer the nanny state, and be oppressed with conformity?
c) I defined "Liberty", and Derek and
Pinhead agreed that liberty = anarchy, which of course means that everybody cannot be trusted and therefore controlled - Derek's crowning achievement was to find the likely definition source (it wasn't, but that's irrelevant).
Derek and Pinhead would have the reader believe that liberty to anarchy, then conveniently label people like me with tags such as "redneck". DR took it further into fantasyland.
Make up your own mind what you think is valid: LIBERTY
a) Using his link:
anarchy,
lawlessness (a state of lawlessness and disorder (usually resulting from a failure of government)). Duhhh!
b) Check:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty
Liberty is generally considered a
concept of
political philosophy and identifies the condition in which an
individual has the ability to act according to his or her own
will.
Individualist and
liberal conceptions of liberty relate to the freedom of the individual from outside compulsion;
A
socialist perspective, on the other hand, associates liberty with equality. As such, a socialist connects liberty (i.e. freedom) to the equal distribution of power (i.e. democracy), arguing that liberty without equality amounts to the
domination of the most
powerful. Thus, freedom and democracy are seen as intrinsically connected.
Obviously people like me who believe such things as Liberty and TRUE Democracy are "rednecks" and, and, and
What I've been trying to say all along that you blokes are much like us, and are progressively being made suffer restrictions and regulations that will eventually see you fishing in cyberspace on your computer - that is of course only if your PC is powered by solar (etc). But of course we will be much better off because we will be "Safer" driving a PC than out fishing or shooting feral animals or paper targets. And as fishing and hunting (not abbatiors of course) kill things, then overall - "lives will be saved" and the politicans can crow that misleading fact - they we vote for more. It's the constant social re-engineering that is the problem and people impotent to stop it in the current system we all suffer.
I explained that I've seen and been involved in it all before - way back in the late 60s, early 70s. I've seen that when fragmented we fall, and I don't want to see that happen again because there's not much left to loose. And like many if not most other shooters / hunters, I do fish - I dive and main interest is marine biology, not guns.
Anyway - it's a pointless squabble. I just wish we could all get together and form one voting block. If that be the Aust Shooters Party or the AFLP it really doesn't matter, so long as whoever may attain some political influence, does represent our shared interests to ensure that fellow outdoors types are not stomped on by the many within government that ardently seek to define and control everything.
Peter Cunningham